NewsLatin AmericaLopez Obrador sends to Congress his project to transfer the National Guard to the Army

Lopez Obrador sends to Congress his project to transfer the National Guard to the Army

The Mexican Government has sent to Congress its project to transfer the National Guard to the structure of the Secretary of Defense (Sedena). Dependent on the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection since its birth, in March 2019, there has been no lack of criticism these years for the closeness of the corporation to the Army. The head of the Guard is a retired military commander and most of its members are soldiers transferred from the Armed Forces. The Congress begins this Thursday the period of sessions in which it will discuss and vote on the initiative.

There has hardly been any respite for the National Guard. Emerging in the midst of a bitter debate about its relevance, the president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, pointed to its advent as a remedy for two of the main evils plaguing the country, corruption and insecurity. For the president, the Federal Police, predecessor of the Guard, was a burden, an example of corruption and failure. His disappearance was necessary.

Since the presidential campaign and after his victory, in July 2018, Lopez Obrador proposed the appearance of the National Guard as a solution to both problems. Already then, the future president was planning the military secondment of the corporation. For him, the Armed Forces were -and are- the repository of the essence of the old revolutionary armies, which overthrew the regime of caudillo Porfirio Diaz, just over a century ago: incorruptible, reliable, loyal, effective. On more than one occasion he has repeated the phrase that “the Army is the people in uniform”, or some of its variants.

At that time, critical voices from civil society, grouped around the Security without War collective, expressed concern about Lopez Obrador’s intentions. They pointed out the mistakes made in previous governments due to the police use of soldiers, a use parallel to the proliferation of complaints of human rights violations committed in the streets by soldiers.

Academics and activists demanded that Morena, the president’s party, defend the civilian nature of the Guard in Congress, both in the constitutional reform that required its birth, and in the secondary laws that would regulate its subsequent operation. Then, the critics bent the arm to the president, who relented. But his intention all these years has been to return to the original plan.

He said so a few weeks ago, at one of his morning press conferences. “I am going to issue an agreement so that the National Guard completely depends on the Ministry of Defense, I want Sedena to take charge,” he said then. The Ministry of the Interior has finally sent the decree this Wednesday, which plans to reform several laws, including those of the National Guard, the Army and the Air Force, or that of the Federal Public Administration.

Far from being resolved with reforms to these laws, the change creates a legal mess that will take time to resolve. The problem for the Government is in the Constitution. As part of the creation of the National Guard, Congress enshrined its civilian character in the Magna Carta. To change the Constitution, Morena would need two-thirds of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies, a majority that she lacks. There have been many voices that have criticized that in the face of legal difficulties, the Government simply proposes ignoring the Constitution.

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Source: EL PAIS

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